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The guard opens the door for me and kindly takes said coat to hang it up. I’ve just handed it off when Crystal, dressed in a black sweater dress, rushes in my direction. “Mark headed to a meeting with Chris for a charity project and he forgot a document that he needs. He’s swinging around to the curb to grab it. Give me five. You know where my office is, right? Or if you like coffee, the breakroom is right by the room we were in for the auction the other night. I just made a fresh pot.”
“I’d love some coffee,” I say, “and feel no pressure. I’m in no rush.”
“Thank you, Aria.” She squeezes my arm and grabs her coat before heading outside.
I walk to the auction area Crystal directed me toward and easily find the breakroom. I’ve just stepped inside when the sound of a few violin notes fills the air. I freeze with the certainty that Kace is here, perhaps lingering from a rehearsal with Chris. He begins to play “Carmina Burana,” which is a famous composition most people have heard but don’t know by name. It’s brilliant, intense, emotional. My father loved it and just hearing it tightens my chest. The connection to my past is too intense to ignore.
I follow the hot and cold notes of a perfectly played violin and enter the auction room to find him standing on stage. Dressed in black jeans, a black T-shirt, boots, and a black beanie, he is every bit his rock star image, but it’s not his physical looks that make him a star. I stand there in the doorway and watch the way his face dances with emotion as he plays, the way his hands control his instrument to match those emotions.
The chairs are gone now, and I can’t help myself. Daringly, I walk to the center of the empty room, smack in the middle, and watch him play, savoring the dramatic way he drives every note, the expression on his handsome face that says he feels every note. And I feel them with him. I feel them right down to my very soul where the violin still lives, where my father still lives, where my mother now lives with him. My lashes lower and I can see myself standing in his shop back in Italy, laughing as he blasted this song and pretended to play it on an invisible violin. My mother is there, too, and it’s her he plays for, her he dances around for. Her he kisses, when he lowers that imaginary instrument.
The song ends in a swell of emotion for me and I struggle to regain my composure. Slowly, my lashes lift and to my shock, Kace is standing in front of me. I blink into his intense, probing stare, stunned at how close he is to me, a sway from our bodies aligning. “What does it mean to you?” he asks.
“You are so very gifted, Kace. The way you feel every note is mesmerizing and contagious.”
He reaches up and strokes the dampness from my cheeks, and that song, his song, is a sultry, alluring drug I can’t begin to explain. I’m weak for this man and the memories his song has stirred. “This isn’t about me,” he says. “It’s about you. About what the sound of a violin means to you.”
He’s both right and wrong. He’s a messenger, the gifted artist that returned me to the past, to my father, to the father we as a family deserted, and in that, this is about him. It’s also about me and my decisions. Gio was right. Our father, our family, deserves more than our fear.
“Aria,” Kace prods softly.
I refocus on him, on this moment, not the many that have passed me by, moments that perhaps I should never have let pass me by. “You took me on a journey, Kace. It was a journey I needed to take. So thank you. I can’t be the first to say that to you.”
“And yet yours is the only one I want to understand.”
“Why? Mine is just another story.”
“No,” he replies. “It’s not that simple.”
I could read into that statement and see an enemy, see the danger, and before today, I would have. I’m exhausted by the fight or flight reaction that is my every moment. My every moment before this moment. Right here, right now, standing with Kace, I refuse to create feelings he doesn’t stir in me naturally.
But he knows I know music. He knows my powerful connection to the violin. I feel that shared joy swell between us. And in music, the connection I have felt to this man from the moment we met is too present to ignore—the air thickens with it, pulses with it, the pull between us heavy and hard. I can almost feel us leaning into each other without ever moving. But then footsteps sound, high heels clacking on tile, and the moment is gone. I take a step back, but Kace does not.
